Occam’s Razor

Fiddling while Rome burns

It is that time of year when I start writing checks to charities. One of my favorite charities is local: So Others Might Eat. SOME is an interfaith effort in Washington D.C. that provides for the basic needs of the area’s poor and homeless. As their name suggests they spend much of their money providing them meals. They also provide clothing and health care to people who obviously cannot afford it. In addition, they work to break the cycle of poverty through services like addiction treatment and counseling, job training and affordable housing. How could Jesus not approve? “Whatsoever you do to the least of my brothers, that you do unto me,” he told us. His message is clear: find grace and meaning by practicing compassion and relieving human suffering.

I am so grateful that I was never homeless nor hungry. That is not to say I do not feel some empathy for these people. I have lived from meager paycheck to paycheck. I never went hungry, but I spent a couple years on the borderline, barely able to pay my rent and eating many meals consisting of little more than rice and entrees in boil a bags, because I could afford little better. When my car died, I lived for a couple years without one. I felt like many of today’s graduates do: that I deserved more from life than what I got. Life was risky when you are 21, you have a new degree and the job market sucks. In the complex game of natural selection in which I was caught, only my relative youth was an asset.

Most religions teach us that life is sacred. The Catholic Church goes the extra mile and prohibit adherents from doing anything “unnatural” to prevent pregnancy or anything deliberate to shorten its lifespan. While life certainly seems to me to be something of a miracle, it should seem less miraculous. We humans are so good at increasing our numbers and extending our life spans that a case can be made that we live unnatural lives. We are rapidly changing our world, and not for the better. Global warming, largely due to human activity, is now an accepted fact. None of us comes with an environmental expiration date. Mother Nature does not knock on our doors and say, “Well, you’ve had your 57 years. You’ve taken as much from the planet as it can give you and sustain the rest of us, so it’s time to die.” We resist. “I am here and I am entitled to live my life as I please. I will live a long life. I will live a prosperous life. I will live a comfortable life. I will be free and I will be reckless in my happiness. I owe no debt to the earth. Go screw yourself.”

I could perhaps satisfy Mother Nature by living a simpler life. I could be like Billy Graham and live alone in a cabin in the woods. Of course, I will not. It is not just me, I tell myself. I do it for my family. I do it for the ones I love. My wife and I are about ready to send our daughter to college. The last thing I want for her is to spend her adult years washing dishes. No, I wish for her a lifestyle similar or better than mine, in a house with central heating and air conditioning, and a car, and in a job that pays well and in a field where she will find meaning and personal growth. My miserable period was rather brief, but it was miserable. I do not want her to endure anything like it because, gosh, it hurt. For similar reasons, I ache for the wretched and homeless and write checks to SOME. I want happiness for that skid row alcoholic too. I want humans to stop dying of preventable diseases or to have to endure pointless suffering. Moreover, I want all war to end, pronto! Just say no to violence, people!

And I want the Earth to be a garden of Eden again. That is, I want a pony.

When I hit that last point that is when I feel like I should go douse myself in cold water. I have castigated President Bush for his guns and butter approach to war. I have castigated Republicans for expecting low taxes and plenty of government services at the same time. Therefore, I should hold myself to my own standard. I should take less, a lot less from this world than I do. Will I do it? Not a chance.

In a sense, my selfishness, as well as the collective selfishness of all of us living a first world life, as well as the billions desperately clawing their way toward a prosperous life, is writing the extinction of our species and possibly our planet. Each of us, by making this very natural choice to move from misery toward comfort is sending a four-finger salute to future generations. We are also sending this message to the other species that inhabit our planet, and on whom we depend for our mutual survival. In addition, we are sending a message to future generations: if we can be so selflessly reckless, so should you.

After all, freedom is what America is all about. Yes, there is a price to freedom. It is not just, as the proponents of the military tell us, that freedom must be defended. Freedom comes with certain constraints. One of its natural constraints is that the more of us there are, the less free each of us can be. Hence, we end up with community associations dictating the color of paint we must use on our houses. However, it is not just population increases that make us less free. It is also how we choose to live our lives. Each person who chooses to live a prosperous life is acting like a neighbor who plays his rock music all night long at ear piercing volumes. That more of us engage in this habit does not mean we are all, either individually or as a whole, really better off.

Even Al Gore is in denial. He talks about setting the thermostat down a few degrees and replacing incandescent lights with fluorescent lights. He says we must do this to reduce our carbon footprint. Obviously, these are steps in the right direction. Nevertheless, we should not kid ourselves. Al is not planning to give up his house in the suburbs either. His air conditioner may have a higher efficiency rating than yours, but he is not going to put it out with the trash. He too will take much more from the earth than it can affordably give him. Even if we followed all his suggested practices, the earth would not be in balance. At best, we might delay our day of reckoning.

To paraphrase the philosopher Bertrand Russell, I now find myself uncomfortably awake. I know my selfish actions are counterproductive to the values I claim to espouse. I know I am a damned hypocrite. I will continue to assuage my conscience by tinkering around the edges. Those plastic yogurt cups will continue to go in the recycle bin. I expect we will replace those incandescent lights with fluorescent ones. However, I also understand that these actions do not amount to atonement, and that I will continue to live an earth-hostile life. My car may be a hybrid instead of a Hummer, but I am still a sinner. I am farting a little less than my neighbor is, but I am still stinking up the room.

Perhaps knowing that you are in denial is a prerequisite toward moving toward real penance. If so, I am just tentatively sticking my head above the herd and bleating, “This is a real problem, folks.” The herd, being a herd, does not want to hear me but they sure notice that I am trotting in step with them. I shall bleat nonetheless. Meanwhile, I will keep recycling my yogurt cups. In doing so, I do not really atone for my sins. However, for whatever it means, I do acknowledge my sins. I am sorry I am such a reckless fool, but at least I know I am a fool.

December 24th, 2006 at 10:35pm Posted by Mark | Politics 2006 | one comment

The Price of Growth

Here in Northern Virginia, residents on its western edge are in a bit of a tizzy. These areas in Loudoun and Prince William counties, along with counties even further to the west hugging the Shenandoah Mountains, are Washington D.C.’s latest and fastest growing bedroom communities. Uppity blue-blooded towns like Middleburg, home to wineries, the well moneyed and fox hunting, who have taken the Virginia piedmont for granted are feeling the press of encroaching civilization. To their south, new bedroom communities like Gainesville are growing by leaps and bounds. For the moment, this land is relatively cheap. This means many of these pastoral areas are now sporting boxy McMansions instead of foxholes. Most of these residents take pride in their new homes and their unspoiled views. You can see the Shenandoah Mountain much more clearly from places like Warrenton and Gainesville than you can from where I live, in Fairfax County.

Along with growth of course come all the trappings of growth: strip malls, congested highways, overcrowded schools and power lines. The strip malls do not seem to bother these latest residents. No doubt, they grumble about the crowded schools. Those who commute regularly from these far-flung exurbs to Washington D.C. have to groan through nightmarish commutes that get them up long before dawn and deposit them home long after the dinner hour. However, it seems to be a price they are willing to pay for a relatively affordable home in the exurbs, the white picket fence and to not hear neighbors playing rock music at 2 a.m. In time, they expect their houses will become excellent investments, as my closer in house has become for me in the 13 years we have lived in closer-in Fairfax County. Nevertheless, there appears to be one adjustment they cannot tolerate: new fifteen story power lines courtesy of Dominion Virginia Power and Pennsylvania based Alleghany Power.

The Virginia Piedmont is without question gorgeous real estate. At least for now it consists of many miles of generally rolling hills, mostly deforested, which make a gradual incline as they approach the Shenandoah Mountains to the west. Perhaps it is the relative lack of trees in this part of Virginia that has these new residents so up in alarm. Without them, it is hard to obscure the ugliness of these new power lines set to run through their neighborhoods. Some are watching their hopes for a tidy fortune disappear with the power lines.

She bought her 100-acre Delaplane farm last year, when it was an overgrown slice of land anchored by a rundown old farmhouse just off Interstate 66. She plowed all her savings into it. To pay down her $1 million mortgage and build up her horse business, she planned to sell a five-acre chunk within a couple of years.

Then came what her neighbors have come to regard as “the black cloud.”

“I’m probably sunk by this,” said Eaton, 45, seated by the wood stove she uses to heat the farmhouse. “No one will buy that land if some ugly power line could run right over their house. I’m broken off at the knees.”

I am having a hard time summoning much sympathy for these property owners. That is not to say that I too would not be aghast if Virginia Power decided to put up fifteen story power lines in my neighborhood. However, that was never a problem. My community was settled before I bought my house. In fact, there are high voltage power lines about half a mile from my house. There is many a nice house as well as a McMansion close to these power lines too. I have not taken the time to assess their value compared to homes like mine that are further away, but I doubt those high tension power lines have affected their property values too much. At least here in Fairfax County, it is location, location, location. If you live in Fairfax County, you are within twenty miles of an incredible number of diverse and well paying jobs. Residents seem to agree: being closer to good schools and good jobs is worth the price of having a high power line as a next-door neighbor.

On the other hand, what are the people in these latest exurbs thinking? Did they think growth would not involve some messy choices? Virginia and Alleghany Power understand what is going on: these areas are growing like gangbusters. Eventually they will not be able to meet demand for electricity unless they build the infrastructure now to support these communities. Hence the need for fifteen story power lines. The only question is where to place them. For the most part, they are hoping to place them not too far from I-66, which is the major interstate heading west from Washington D.C. This seems reasonable to me. I-66 is a bit of an eyesore as an interstate anyhow. It would be hard to make things much worse by putting a power line next to it, unless, of course, you have property close to these power lines.

Most homeowners in these areas will make out very well. I expect their home values will rise steadily. The land may no longer be so pristine. They may be spending their days in new traffic jams far from the city. Nevertheless, more swatches of Virginia piedmont seemed doomed to succumb to humanity’s need for large living spaces.

While people have to live somewhere, in my mind the obscenity are not plans to put in these admittedly ugly power lines. The real obscenity is the way these pristine lands are being transformed into new oversized habitats for humanity. These newly traffic-clogged roads once ferried the likes of statesmen like Thomas Jefferson. Instead of building in closer to cities like Washington, which already have large tracks of land that could be redeveloped, we have to push out further, destroying our environment, further reducing space needed for wild animals and exacerbating global warming in the process.

I understand why these people choose to live where they live. If I were a twenty something again it would probably seem like a logical choice to me. I probably could not afford to live closer in. However, I do not think I would be so naïve as to think my choice would not be without some necessary tradeoffs. Fifteen story power lines are part of the price of growth. These NIMBYies may be upset now, particularly if their property values are affected. Nevertheless, you can bet they would be much more upset if ten years from now their house suffered regular brownouts because the supply of power could not keep up with the demand.

They should swallow their misgiving and applaud Virginia and Alleghany Power for being proactive. If they do not like it, it is not too late to sell their estates in the exurbs, and move in to some smaller and more modest estate closer in. I suspect Mother Nature would prefer it if they made that kind of choice.

December 12th, 2006 at 08:12pm Posted by Mark | Politics 2006 | no comments

A Dubious Passage

If you are in the transportation business, geography is rarely your friend. Due to the nature of air travel, the air freight business can somewhat ignore geography. However, even in that business the great circle routes between destinations are not always available. If you are involved in ground transportation there are mountains that must be scaled, swamps that must be bypassed, rivers that must be spanned, and traffic that will slow you down. Transportation by sea means navigating around continents, islands, wrecks and shoals. All add time and expense to their desire to move goods quickly and cheaply between two points.

For centuries, one of the biggest obstacles for transporters has been the Americas. Prior to the Panama Canal, trips to the Pacific typically involved arduous and dangerous journeys around the aptly named Cape Fear at the tip of South America. The Panama Canal cut off thousands of miles. However, if you look at a globe you will quickly see that from departure points like London, even the Panama Canal does not come close to being a direct route to the Orient. Consequently, for centuries one of the dreams of mariners has been a reliable Northwest Passage over the top of Canada, through the Arctic Ocean, and thence into the Pacific. It approximates a great circle route taken by airplanes. Such a venture by sea would save weeks and about four thousand miles of unnecessary travel.

There was, unfortunately, one small problem: the mass of arctic ice that tenaciously extended over much of the Arctic Ocean. Trying to get through that seemed about as likely to happen as the Second Coming. British mariners were among the first to try and fail to find a navigable Northwest Passage. The wrecks of many ships along Canada’s eastern and northern coasts demonstrated that such ventures were futile. Modern icebreakers are usually successful and cutting paths through the Arctic ice. However, their paths often do not remain open for long. During the summer, a few commercial ships have succeeded in claiming the Northwest Passage. However, even today such crossings are dangerous. The season is sort. Icebergs and shoals along the Arctic Ocean remain very real threats. For these reasons, even after all these years, a Northwest Passage to the Orient remains too dangerous for all but a handful of shippers to try. Those that try have to do so only during a very short period of Arctic summer.

The times may be changing. Because of global warming, the Arctic ice is rapidly receding. The average temperature of the Arctic has increased five degrees Fahrenheit in just 30 years. As a result, the Arctic ice mass is quickly receding. A Northwest Passage is looking to be commercially viable at last.

The Canadian Coast Guard icebreaker Amundsen weaves in graceful slow motion through the ice pack, advancing through the legendary Northwest Passage well after the Arctic should be iced over and shuttered to ships for the winter.

The fearsome ice is weakened and failing, sapped by climate change. Ultimately, this night’s ghostly procession through Icebreaker Channel will be the worst the ship faces on its late-season voyage. Much of the trip, crossing North America from west to east through the Northwest Passage, will be in open water, with no ice in sight.

You would think that maybe this would be a cause for alarm. However, in the world of commerce, this may be an event worth toasting.

“Shipping companies are going to think about this, and if they think it’s worth it, they are going to try it,” says the captain of the Amundsen, Cmdr. Alain Gariepy, 43. “The question is not if, but when.”

Environmentalists are, to say the least, alarmed:

Satellite imagery has shown that the Arctic ice cap is thinning and already is nearly 30 percent smaller than it was 25 years ago. In the winter of 2004-05, the Arctic’s perennial ice, which usually survives the summer, shrank by 280,000 square miles, the size of Turkey. This past August, a crack opened in the ice pack from the Russian Arctic to the North Pole, an event never seen before.

Arctic ice reflects sunlight; its absence may accelerate global warming. The intricate chemistry that occurs in the rich Arctic waters could go haywire with unaccustomed heat and sunlight. Whole species seem destined to disappear while others move northward in their place. Inuit who thrived here for millennia are finding the thin ice and changed wildlife inhospitable.

Opponents often chastise us environmentalists (not to mention Democrats). “They look at the glass as half empty, instead of half full,” they say about us. Look on the bright side of global warming: a Northwest Passage in fact would cut the costs of commercial shipping, expanding free trade and helping to lift all boats.

This is a poor turn of phrase, under the circumstances. Because all that melting ice will definitely lift all boats, as well as likely cause the relocations of millions of people to higher grounds. In fact, when looking for evidence of the effects of global warming, the Arctic, while remote, is where its affect is most clear and dramatic. The sheets of ice that cover most of Greenland are cracking, pouring fresh water into the ocean, decreasing ocean salinity and rising sea levels. The Ward Ice Shelf in the Arctic Ocean, which has stood unchanged for three millennium, has been cracking since 2000. Glaciers in Alaska are melting. Polar bears may soon be an endangered species: there are not enough ice flows for them to move across the Arctic Ocean. As Arctic ice retreats, more sea pups die because adult seals have to swim further for food.

Even though commercial shipping possibilities may expand in the Arctic Ocean, this is one time when it is better to say the glass is half-empty. Global warming is happening beyond any doubt and it may soon change much of the delicate ecosystem above the Arctic Circle. It is hard for us to know now what ripples this will have on the rest of the planet, beyond increased sea levels. However, it should not be cause for just concern, but for alarm. For all life is tied together. What happens in the Arctic is likely to effect all of us in profound ways, many of which we cannot yet imagine.

The United States is the world’s largest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions. These emissions come principally from our cars and our coal burning power plants. As a nation, we can choose to take aggressive steps to rein in our emissions of greenhouse gasses. Alternatively, we can keep burying our heads in the sand and pretend the consequences will not affect us. There are other more benign ways to generate energy other than through burning things. We can move beyond hybrid cars to other forms of transportation, such as light rail, that have much less effect on the environment. We can each do small things that can have enormous impact, such as setting our thermostats down two degrees in the winter and up two degrees in the summer. Al Gore has a number of other ideas we each can do that can help the global warming crisis.

As important as our personal actions are, we must demand a national energy policy that not only makes us energy independent, but which rewards conservation. We need larger incentives for greater degrees of conservation. We can make it more expensive to tear down virgin forests and less expensive to redevelop urbanized lands. We can even demand that manufacturers calculate the cost to the planet for the use of their products, such as the European Union plans to do soon.

It may be that by stemming global warming, we will not just save the polar bear from extinction, but our own species as well. If all life is precious, as the right to life crowd asserts, then the lives of all the species on the planet are also precious, for our relationship is mutually dependent. As for all the alleged benefits of finally having a Northwest Passage, let us not make this passage.

November 17th, 2006 at 10:21pm Posted by Mark | Politics 2006 | no comments

Goodbye Planet Earth

The good news is that virtually everyone, including our president (who typically sticks his head in the sand), agrees that global warming is happening. Perhaps the movie An Inconvenient Truth was the final straw that convinced even the most diehard skeptics. A very vocal but very well moneyed minority (typically representing businesses that are profiting from the status quo) still thinks that humanity’s impact on global warming is minimal. They assert that since global warming is part of a natural trend there is no reason to give ourselves a guilt trip.

As a result, they argue, there is no reason for us to take any drastic actions since we cannot halt it. Moreover, even if we could succeed in taking drastic actions, they will not do any good. On this last point, I grudgingly have to agree with skeptics. I feel an urgency to start doing something concrete and dramatic about global warming. Yet I also get the feeling it is like trying to stop the tide. Humanity’s demographics are working against us. Even if we could enforce the Kyoto Protocols, all it would do is slow the rate of carbon dioxide going into the atmosphere. Meanwhile, since no one can make us stop, humanity will doubtless continue to breed like bunnies. Those new people will put additional demands on the ecosystem. Today there are about 6.5 billion people on the planet. Al Gore in the movie An Inconvenient Truth shows a linear relationship between successive years and temperature. Each year the average global temperature creeps up at such a consistent and methodical rate, you can easily predict next year’s average global temperature.

Human population growth, on the other hand, is growing exponentially. Somewhere around 1830, after hundreds of millions of years of evolution, the total world population reached a billion people. By 1930, it was two billion. By 1960, it was three billion. By 1974: four billion. By 1987: five billion. By 2000: six billion. Here we are six years later and halfway to adding another billion.

“Choose life,” the pro-life people tell us. They should be cheering. Humanity is choosing life in record numbers. They tell us that every life is sacred. However, you have to wonder about our quality of life when every year more and more people are competing for the same resources. Naturally, those who live in third world countries are not too thrilled about their plight. Therefore, when they can they choose prosperity. They cross borders in search of better lives. Those of us in first world countries are choosing life too. And we are choosing to live a large life. In the process, we exacerbate global warming. We tear down the trees that can convert our excess carbon dioxide to oxygen. We drive vehicles that emit carbon dioxide. The infrastructure that gives us life’s many amenities exists largely because of the ready availability of petroleum, which, when burned it emits carbon dioxide that causes global warming. We are determined to have a better quality of life than our parents had, or die trying. We think micro, not macro. We think me not we. We try to ignore our interdependence.

Nature has been knocking on our doors. It has been trying to give us a wakeup call. For example, over the last few weeks California has experienced sustained record heat. These heat spells are not just a little hotter than things used to be, but much hotter. High temperatures passed 110 degrees in many places in California. It reached 99 degrees in San Francisco. Fortunately, brownouts were minimal. Yet in order to keep cool, Californians pushed the power system for all it was worth, driving record demand. Since most of that energy came from non-renewable energy forms like coal burning power plants, cooling ourselves to deal with global warming also exacerbated global warming.

Meanwhile, China is no longer content to be a country full of peasants and water buffalo. It is Great Leap Forward, Version 2 underway right now in China. In a generation, the country will go from the second world to first world. Soon its carbon dioxide production will equal that of the United States. The pollution in China has gotten so bad that it is making it all across the Pacific Ocean. It contributes not only to California’s high temperatures, but also to its poor air quality too. Other emerging economies are probably learning unwise lessons from China’s success: hang the pollution control equipment. Deforest, defile and pollute as necessary until you are first world.

Democracy is the answer, President Bush tells us. When he visits third world countries, he says that industrialization is the answer. He preaches that nations do not have to choose to be miserable. He says any nation if it works hard enough can industrialize itself into first world status. Coming with that industrialization, of course, will be new environmental problems, including more carbon dioxide and global warming. Yes, it may be a wee bit hypocritical of those of us in the first world to suggest to the third world not to industrialize for the good of the planet. Of course, what would be even better would be for us first world countries to devolve into third world countries. Since that is unlikely to happen (barring nuclear war), is it too much to expect us to stabilize our population and reduce our greenhouse gas emissions? Yep, apparently it is too much. Republican or Democrat, we have these expectations. America is the land of freedom, and we can never have enough freedom. Since freedom generally translates into, “I get to do what I want to do and hang the consequences for anyone else”, it seems unlikely that we will do sensible things like petition for higher gas taxes to discourage driving.

Perhaps as these increasingly nasty effects of global warming continue to manifest themselves, we will begin meaningful changes to our behavior. Perhaps we will all drive electric cars that will run on renewable sources of energy. Perhaps as our telecommunications infrastructure improves, most of us will work from home. Perhaps we will learn to start biking to work. Perhaps, but I am not counting on it in the short term.

I feel despondent. In a way, I am glad to be mortal. I am pushing 50. With luck will be around this planet another 30 or 40 years. Nevertheless, along with my natural angst associated with growing old, I am already feeling deeply sad about the seemingly unstoppable problem of global warming. I also feel nostalgic for a time within my memory when the earth seemed in balance. Our environment, on which we all depend, is now fragile. We are the bull in the china shop, largely heedless of the carnage that we are causing and the effect it will have on this and future generations.

I am nostalgic for bone crushing cold winter days I knew in upstate New York, but which now happens much more rarely. I am nostalgic for a time when mountain snowmelts happened in May, not March or April. I am nostalgic for a time when the hottest day all year was 90 degrees. I am nostalgic for a time when I did not have to worry about the air quality index because the air quality was always fine.

I am distraught and sad at how we have raped our wonderful planet. I am angry and frustrated that we are likely to thoughtlessly keep at it. So perhaps my death will be in some way a relief, because by then the earth will no longer the place that I remember. We have remade it, and not for the better. If after death I reincarnate, I hope it is in some greener and fresher world where the citizens live in balance with nature, where glaciers do not melt, and where we treat nature with the reverence of Native Americans. I will be sorry to pass on our trashed and overcrowded planet to my daughter. I will also be angry with myself for not doing more to shake people up. Here is one more futile attempt to do so. It is likely already too late.

July 30th, 2006 at 08:36pm Posted by Mark | Politics 2006 | no comments

Review: An Inconvenient Truth

Is global warming happening? If it is happening, is it part of a natural trend? Or is it being caused by human activity? If so, can we really do anything to stop it? Or should be just shrug it off and consider the upsides: more time in bathing suits and less time shoveling snow.

Those who keep up on my blog know I do not need convincing. Global warming is undoubtedly happening. Even our president admits it is happening. In addition, human activity is contributing to global warming. President Bush admits that too. He only disagrees on how much we humans contributing to the problem and the methods that should be employed to address it.

Al Gore begs to differ. You remember Al. In the film An Inconvenient Truth, he introduces himself as the man who used to be the next president of the United States. It gets a laugh at every seminar he gives on global warming. The documentary An Inconvenient Truth is largely a filmed version of Al’s global warming seminar. It is his traveling road show. Armed with a Macintosh computer with a very big screen, Al is now traveling the world doing his best to convince anyone who will listen that the global warming phenomenon is real and action must be taken now. His slide show is very impressive. It would take a very cynical person to come away from the movie not realizing that human activity is the major cause of global warming.

The film is marketed as the scariest movie you will ever see. What could be scarier than real life? In fact, I did not find the film that scary. I certainly learned some new things from the movie. However, I understood before coming into the theater that global warming was real and that its consequences were catastrophic. I do hope that the film will bring in average Americans who maybe are not totally convinced. I suspect though that the film will largely preach to the choir.

I hope that it will not dissuade you from seeing the movie, for even those who agree with Al should still see this film. Do the earth a favor though, and bring someone with you who are a skeptic or are still on the fence. Ideally take a whole bunch of friends. Not only will they be uncomfortably awake after the movie, but also by just attending, they will help address global warming. Five percent of the ticket price goes to support advocacy. I can write off 5% of the $19.50 I paid for two tickets on my income tax!

No question about it though. Al has a terrific yet sobering slide show. Whatever presentation software he is using, PowerPoint was not up to the job. The movie is 90% filmed lecture, and 10% background. We learn that Al was first exposed to global warming research in college. For whatever reason, it became a cause he passionately latched onto. As you may know, in 1992 he wrote a book on global warming, Earth in Balance. Here he is fourteen years later, the almost president of the United States, yet we see him going through metal detectors at airports just like the rest of us. He is now Citizen Gore. He seems to have put his defeat behind him and is doing the best he can to shake us up on this issue before it is too late. In the movie he says that he has given his lecture thousands of times. We even see him giving the lecture in China. Al really believes that if he works hard enough the message will get through and real policy change will happen.

Gone is Wooden Al. In the movie, we find the authentic Al Gore. While he may not be wooden, his passion is still somewhat restrained. We see a rather low-key Al Gore who is introspective, sobering and full of gravitas. No theatrics are necessary. This is one time when the facts speak far more convincingly. Instead, you are left wondering: are we doomed? Is there any hope left for our planet and our species?

Thankfully, the answer is yes. Stemming global warming is quite doable. It is not some sort of pie in the sky notion that must wreck world economies. All it takes is will. In fact, Al makes a convincing case that companies that work to stem global warming will be the economic winners. Perhaps that is why General Electric is working on products that will help stem global warming. Al shows us that it is possible because we have already demonstrated that will. International efforts have stemmed the manufacture of chlorofluorocarbons. That once gaping ozone hole in the Southern Hemisphere has closed up. It is one first and modest success in the climate change challenge for which humanity can take credit.

Usually when the movie credits start, you head for the exit. During the credits in this film, we also see suggestions on how each of us can help stem global warming. The Bethesda Row Cinema, where I saw the film with my father, also had a stack of flyers with suggestions on how to help stem global warming. I took one home. I was glad to see I am already doing certain things right (I own a hybrid and bike to work frequently). Others will take more convincing. I am not sure my wife will let me set up the thermostat two degrees during the summer.

In a world of self-serving politicians, it is such a pleasure to see an ex-politician not squander the rest of their life, but work to do something meaningful for humanity and the planet. Jimmy Carter works hard to bring democracy to the rest of the world. Al Gore is working hard to wake us up to the reality of climate change. It will be the rare person who comes away from this movie without a renewed respect for Al Gore. I for one wish he would run for president again.

June 18th, 2006 at 11:41am Posted by Mark | Politics 2006, The Arts | no comments

The end of the best of times

Some time ago, I wrote about the end of cheap oil. The oil economy is definitely on my mind today because we are in transit. As I write this, we are snaking into Ohio from Pennsylvania on the turnpike. I am wondering how much longer Americans can take for granted simply getting into your car and taking it anywhere you want to go.

There are scary signs out there for us drivers. If they are causing jitters on Wall Street, they should at least make our hearts skip a beat.

- Crude oil prices spiked past $67 a barrel in open trading on Friday
- Gasoline prices hovering near $2.50 a gallon
- The markets are nervous about our ability to refine all the oil we are importing. Refineries do not have much excess capacity. Moreover, it is difficult to finance and locate new refineries.
- General uncertainty about our foreign oil supply

It may be that these oil spikes will be a passing phase. Frankly, when I first wrote about the end of cheap oil, I did not imagine it would get this expensive this quickly. I wrote about $150 a barrel oil prices as being something fantastic. Now it seems quite plausible. After all a year ago, the price of a barrel of crude oil was $40. Now it is at $67 a barrel, an increase of more than 50% in one year. You would think that with such high prices that demand would be dropping, but that is not the case.

Economists tell us that there are few better ways to stimulate the supply of a commodity than a sustained high price. One expert on the talk show circuit assures us that there are large new untapped oil reserves out there. He says that they will add much more new oil onto the market the within the next decade, bringing down prices. Perhaps these new supplies will buy us another decade or two of the status quo. Perhaps the increased cost of oil will make it economically viable to mine oil from shale, or to use synthetic fuels like ethanol. Nevertheless, as National Geographic points out in its most recent issue, these new approaches will help but is no silver bullet. More people are coming and they will demand more energy.

Demand shows little sign of slacking. In addition, it is not just emerging economies like China and India are driving new demand. The United States needs more and more oil too. Our population keeps expanding. Moreover, the way we are growing is fueling even more demand. People tend to live where they think they will get the best value for their money. Not surprisingly then they prefer the outer suburbs where land is relatively cheap. However, by making the choice they also exacerbate our nation’s oil dependency.

Today, for example, we were trying to wend our way from Northern Virginia to Frederick, Maryland. I could not help but be astounded by all the growth in Loudoun Country, Virginia. Reputedly, it is currently the fastest growing county in the country. My memories, only a few years old, recall the area of U.S. Route 15 north of Leesburg being only a two-lane road. Now it is four or six lanes as necessary. Townhouses, condominiums and ubiquitous shopping centers crowd along the edges of the road. Frankly, I find this kind of crazy growth disturbing and more than a little frightening.

Of course that far out there is little resembling public transportation. The closest Washington Metro Station is probably twenty-five miles away. For the most part people who live in Leesburg work elsewhere. Typically, they work ten to forty miles from where they live. There might be a commuter bus or two that wends commuters from Leesburg into Washington D.C. every day. However, only a fraction of these commuters needs to go to the big city. Most are moving from an outer suburb to an inner one. With virtually no other choices, they get there by car.

Consequently, for these new homeowners a car is an absolute necessity of life. Of course their cars must have gasoline. This new growth has created an already amazing amount of congestion in the exurbia along roads like Leesburg Pike or Sully Road. Where will the oil come from to keep these commuters mobile? What if the oil is simply not available to sustain their lifestyles? What then?

It is a hard question whose consequences are hard to think through. If the situation were to last for any length of time, there would be huge economic problems. We would be fortunate if the situation merely instigated a recession. A depression seems much more likely, along with huge amounts of inflation. In the short term, some sort of gasoline rationing would be needed. Our experience during the oil shocks of the 1970s does not bode well for this decade. Those 1970s oil shocks might be relatively mild by comparison. Back in the 1970s, we pumped most of our own oil out of the ground. Now we import far more oil than we pump from our fields. Expecting new oil fields like the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to solve our problem is naïve. Even if we could get at the oil, we could not draw it fast enough to make much difference in our oil dependency.

If we did not have enough oil it is not like these people living in exurbia could suddenly turn to public transportation. It could not begin to cope with the demand. It would take decades to rearrange our infrastructure to suit an oil-diminished reality. I am not sure if it is even possible. Our whole infrastructure is no longer arranged for public transportation. We live too far apart. Even if public transportation were available, getting from A to B would likely take much longer.

There was a time not too long ago when we lived in villages and life’s necessities were nearby. This became clear to me during our last vacation. We spent one night in Schenectady, New York, the city where I was born. I was amazed by how convenient everything was. You could easily walk to your church, to the store, to your school and to your job. The streets were narrow. The lots tended to be small. What happened? The automobile made the village less attractive. So there was little reason not to build your house out in the country where the land was cheap, since the cost (reasonable commuting time) was less than the benefits (cheaper land, privacy etc.) Cheaper land and cheaper labor elsewhere also drew jobs away from these villages and small cities. It was all predicated on a sustainable economy forever based on oil.

Moreover, our new economy has exacerbated the situation. It is often cheaper for me to order my medications from a mail order pharmacy than to patronize a local pharmacy. Some of our medications are shipped from Phoenix, Arizona to Northern Virginia packed in several pounds of ice. It is cheaper, yet it carries with it a hidden transportation surcharge: the oil that is needed to move it from there to here.

Yesterday our dryer stopped working. This gave me a good excuse to knock on our neighbor’s door. She was happy to let us use her dryer since we were in urgent need. On her kitchen table was a bucket full of tomatoes. Yes, it was tomato season and she was reduced to giving them away. She persuaded me to take a few with me, which I consumed with supper. They tasted delicious and were clearly better than anything I could purchase at the store. Tomatoes sold in stores, of course, are engineered for transportation, not taste. I marveled that I could eat something so delicious that did not cost me any money and was grown a couple hundred feet from my house. No petroleum products were needed to get it from the supplier to the consumer.

In our modern world, we are blessed with a seemingly infinite variety of products. However, the variety does come at a cost since almost all are transported to us using oil based products. Unless we can find a substitute for oil in our not too distant future, or unless there is a lot more oil out there than we think, our times will be a changing. The life you are living will likely seem nostalgic to your children. Perhaps your grandchildren yet unborn will be incredulous that you lived through such a marvelous time.

I sense that the transportation economy we have known may be coming to a rapid end. I suspect it will arrive sooner than we think.

August 13th, 2005 at 08:54pm Posted by Mark | Politics 2005 | no comments

A Tribute to Robert E. Simon

Sometimes giants do walk among us.

In 1984 I moved from Gaithersburg, Maryland to Reston, Virginia solely because I wanted to live in Reston. Earlier that year I had attended a science fiction convention in Reston. While the convention was not memorable, the time I spent in Reston was. Here was a planned community that was done right.

It was the architect Robert E. Simon who, at age 50, used the proceeds of the sale of Carnegie Hall in New York to buy what was then called the Sunset Hills Farm in Northern Virginia. He purchased 6,750 acres to create this unique planned community. This community he decided would be unlike anything done before. It would be a community that would be affordable to all income types. It would allow people to live close to where they worked. When housing was built the lots would not first be cleared of trees. Rather, housing would be built around the trees. Every resident would be within walking distance of a village center where they could buy the necessities of life. And neighborhoods would be connected to each other via trails that would wind their ways through the woods.

Beginning with the creation of Lake Anne Plaza in 1964 the community slowly blossomed. In the mid 1980s the rest of the world finally discovered Reston. Since then there has been no turning back. Reston has become a city with a cosmopolitan feel and a large, vibrant downtown. The Reston Town Center (what amounts to downtown Reston) is something of an oxymoron because there is no town called Reston. In fact there is no city called Reston. Reston is just a place in the middle of Fairfax County. It is wholly unincorporated. But there is an organization, the Reston Association, which ensures that Robert E. Simon’s vision for the town is maintained. The Association can be something of a pain to many residents but it has proven its value. Reston is now a very chic place to live. All those covenants and attention to detail have paid off in property values that are markedly higher than the areas around it. Although it was part of Simon’s vision to create a planned community affordable to all income ranges, I found in 1993 that I could no longer afford to live in Reston if I wanted to also live in a single-family house. Now I live in a nice neighborhood three miles down the road. But it is no Reston.

I miss Reston and I still feel it calling to me. Someday I hope I can go back and live there again. This nostalgic feeling returned this weekend when I (literally) got off my rear end and peddled up to Reston. I’ve been reacquainting myself with a bike lately. Last Thursday I biked to work. I’m finding biking is a convenient way to get the exercise I need. It is also beneficial to the environment. My employer, the U.S. Geological Survey sits at the southwest corner of Reston. It was one of the first employers of note to arrive in Reston. It sat largely by itself on a wooded campus when it opened in 1973. Now it is surrounded by high tech office buildings sporting a mixture of clean industries all very much in line with Simon’s vision for the community.

While I often pass through Reston on my way to somewhere else, and make regular trips to shop in Reston I haven’t really seen Reston in a long time. With my bike I am seeing and appreciating Reston anew. In doing so I feel both nostalgia and a deep hunger to live in Reston again. Yesterday I biked through an apartment complex where I used to live in the south side of Reston. I then biked down the trail that connected my old apartment building with the woods behind it. You can travel for miles on some of these trails and hardly see a house. Instead you feel the presence of nature all around you. I found it intoxicatingly delightful. It was hard to believe I used to take this for granted.

Today I felt more adventurous and biked all the way to Lake Anne Plaza where the community began. When I had first moved to Reston in 1984 my wife and I lived in an apartment complex across the street. We walked around Lake Anne many times. The community of Lake Anne has aged, but it is still a wonderful place. Townhouses, condos and a few single-family homes hug the shores of the lake. Ducks wander along the boat docks looking for handouts. A huge fountain perpetually blows water into the sky from the middle of the lake.

And there sitting on the bench by the dock is a bronze statue of Robert E. Simon. And as I sat there resting my keister on the bench who should amble on by past his own statue but Robert E. Simon himself. You see about ten years ago Bob Simon decided to spend his last years living in Reston. He walked by his statue without giving it a glance and invited a small group of friends waiting for him to join him in a pontoon boat tied to the dock. At age 90 he is stooped but walks around without a cane. He was relaxed and laughing as he piloted the boat out of the dock and into the lake.

This is not the first time I have seen Bob Simon in Reston. I have seen him a couple of times at the church I attend, the Unitarian Universalist Church in Reston. While I don’t believe he is a UU, he has attended forums we’ve put together on the Middle East. As best I can tell he sits there otherwise unrecognized by us inhabitants of his community. He lives nearby in the Heron House, a tall dozen story high condominium that overlooks Lake Anne. I am sure he is a fixture both in bronze and in person on Lake Anne.

I wish I visited Lake Anne more often. And I wish today I had the presence to go down and introduce myself to him. I would have liked to thank him for his vision. But also I would like to thank him for leading by example. I am sure Bob Simon is one very rich man, but he chose to spend his last years as an ordinary citizen, enjoying the fruits of his labor. Reston is not a perfect place. It has become more commercialized than I suspect he would have preferred. And it can be expensive to live there. But it is still very much an oasis for the human soul: a place where one can live in some reasonable harmony with nature and feels its presence all around you.

Thanks Bob.

May 30th, 2004 at 02:50pm Posted by Mark | Sociology | no comments

Racing toward environmental disaster

What an irony. There was a time when the Republican Party was known as the environmental party. Teddy Roosevelt alone created five national parks during his tenure. More recently it was Richard Nixon that created the Environmental Protection Agency. But these days it is getting hard to find Republican environmentalists.

Oh sure there are plenty of Republicans who say they are for the environment. But most of them are liars. Try to find a Republican in Congress that is for the Kyoto Treaty on Global Warming. Know of any? Despite polls like this that say 61% of Americans are in favor of the United States abiding by the Kyoto Treaty Republicans in the Senate will let it come up for a vote, well, when hell freezes over. The new carpet was hardly tacked into place in the Oval Office after Bush’s inauguration when Bush yanked U.S. support for the treaty. Instead Bush advocated a voluntary plan that he said would lower the amount of carbon dioxide emissions produced in our country. Not surprisingly this voluntary plan is working about as well as Governor Bush’s wonderful plan for saving the state of Texas’s air quality. Instead of making the air 20% cleaner in Texas the laws Bush advocated actually made it easier for polluters to pollute and to hide the evidence from the law. As a result of this insightful plan in 1999 Houston’s air quality actually was worse than Los Angeles’s.

Kyoto of course is just a small part of a much larger attitude of contempt toward the environment. Republicans stopped giving much of a damn about the environment during the Reagan Administration. It started with a slap in the face to environmentalists when Anne Burford Gorsuch was appointed to the EPA. She had no experience in protecting the environment. But she had worked hard as a member of the Colorado legislature to fight the EPA that was insisting that Denver comply with the clean air laws. (No lie, she was part of a clique of state legislative representatives self named “the crazies”.) For such a sterling accomplishment this chain smoking 38-year-old woman became EPA administrator. There she spent most of her time making sure it did everything but protect the environment. When not trying to cut the EPA’s budget and coming up with an enemies lists of civil servants she managed to suspend a ban on the disposal of hazardous liquid waste in landfills. Outraged Democrats eventually forced her out under pressure. William Ruckelshaus, the first EPA Administrator, replaced her. EPA employees were so grateful to have her gone they cheered Ruckelshaus’s return.

Throughout the Reagan years the environment was always on the back burner. It was much more important to have cheap gas. Although Bush 41 was relatively kind to the environment his son was not. Bush 43’s attitude seemed to be to beat Anne Burford Gorsuch at her own miserable record. Just a few samples of the Bush 43 environmental wreckage to date:

- Bush delayed until 2015 rules that would reduce soot and smog levels, likely leading to 60,000 premature deaths a year.
- He opened waters off the states of California, Florida and Texas to oil drilling despite protests from the governors of these states, including his own brother.
- He allowed the corporate superfund taxes expire, thereby shifting the burden to the taxpayer instead of the polluters.
- He cut the EPA’s enforcement budget, leading to 13% fewer inspections in 2002 alone.
- He allowed the return noisy, smoke spewing snowmobiles to the pristine Yellowstone National Park.
- He allowed new coal fired power plants to be built around national parks, thereby decreasing visibility in the parks.
- He consistently under funded budgets for the maintenance of the national parks.
- He sought sweeping changes to the Endangered Species Act that has reduced the number of protected species.
- He allowed logging in some of the few remaining old growth forests in the Pacific Northwest.

For over twenty years we have seen a consistent and reckless pattern of antipathy and even hostility toward the environment. Since Bush 43 the gloves seem to be off. A recent EPA decision that will require off road diesel vehicles to comply with Clean Air Standards is the one major exception to a legacy of environmental wreckage.

Most Americans understand the connection between their living choices and the environment. But Republicans are living in denial. That so many species become endangered or extinct annually doesn’t seem to bother them in the least. Never mind the fact that we may need this biodiversity to ensure our own survival as a species. Some of our most promising pharmaceuticals have come from biologically diverse places like pristine tropical forests. When given a choice between growth and the environment growth wins every time. If it looks politically costly to diss the environment, they’ll invent a proposal like the badly named “clear skies” initiative that gives the appearance of doing something but exacerbates the problem. All recommendations that don’t conform to their mental model of how the world should work are the result of bias and bad science.

The fragility of our environment and the interdependence of all living things slide off them like water off the back of a duck. In their minds growth can be sustained forever. Cheap land will always be available. Wetlands are never as important as property rights.

It’s not like we have another planet readily available we can inhabit after we consume this one. Earth is our only possible home. If it becomes our toxic playground we will be the cause of our own extinction. The earth deserves our respect and our survival instinct should require that we provide it. If Republicans were as concerned about family values as they claim to be they would realize that leaving a vibrant ecosystem is the best present they can give their posterity. Instead they pass along values of wanton and reckless selfishness that may kill us all.

May 24th, 2004 at 09:23pm Posted by Mark | Politics 2004 | no comments